March 2010

March 17, 2010

Spring training is like watching baseball in a mirror; everything is backwards.

It’s not the big-name stars that matter.They’re just going through the motions, playing an inning or two,
getting in a couple of at-bats, then jogging half heartedly in the outfield
like your uncle Harvey. No, it’s the guys who are battling for a position that
matter, the kids who are trying to impress, the utility player from the other
league who has signed a minor league contract and is trying to find a spot on
the bench, the high draft choice everyone is talking about.

And it’s not the end of the game that matters as it
will in a few weeks in championship play when every managerial move will be
scrutinized, every mistake magnified, when only the best get to play and you
save your most effective pinch hitter, your finest fielder, your fastest
pitcher for the very end of the game. No, it’s the beginning of the game that
matters in spring training when your batters are facing their best pitchers and
vice versa. The deeper you get into the game, the less important the players
and the plays, the less heroic the heroics, the less catastrophic the
catastrophes.

And it’s not the outcome that counts. The final
score means very little. In fact, you can leave in the seventh, never know who
wins, and miss nothing. It’s the opposite of the regular season when only the
final score matters, when what is truly notable about Ernie Banks or Ron Santo
or Fergie Jenkins is not their batting average or number of home runs,
strikeouts or wins but that they never won nothin’.

In fact, spring training is not really baseball. It’s
imitation baseball. It’s a bunch of people doing impressions of baseball. It’s
that way in the stands, too. Hohokam Park in Mesa, Arizona, is a little Wrigley
Field, with lots of blue caps, knots of people from Chicago’s near north side
(there are Soba noodles available for them) and Arlington Heights and Des
Moines (fried pork loin sandwiches are available for them), like members of
some university club in a distant city, all reliving moments displaced not so
much in time as in place. Even Ronnie Woo is there, the legendary and ageless
Cubs fan dressed in blue pinstripes and warming up his “Cubs woo!” cry for the
coming season.

And it’s that way under the stands, too. Concession
workers aren’t cranky or jaded enough, ticket takers are too old and friendly,
and the venders all seem to be practicing the best lines they’ve heard real
venders use over the years: “Crackerjack!It ain’t a ballgame without Crackerjack!” and “Imported beer! Imported
from the ‘frigerador.”

Beyond the outfield wall, there’s a green sloping
lawn on which kids play tag, babies nap, families picnic, college boys drink
beer and coeds work on their already impressive tans causing my cynical twenty-year-old
son Griffin to note beneath his breath that the only thing Arizona State is
number one in is STDs.

And as for the game, well, the Reds hit a homerun
and then the Cubs, and later there is a double play, I think.

No, the real fun of spring training is six blocks
away at Fitch Park, “The Winter Home of the Chicago Cubs.”The players from the roster and the high
minors are all at Hohokam or in Las Vegas playing a split squad game. The
players at Fitch are the future, and it is there that we spend the morning
before the Cubs/Reds game. There are four back to back fields there like
pastures, and across them graze over a hundred young, blue cubs trying hard not
to look callow or intimidated or too far from home, and many are very young and
very far from home. There’s Wes Darvill, a six foot two inch, one hundred and
seventy-five pound shortstop and fifth round draft pick out of Langley, British
Columbia who hit .223 in the Arizona Instructional League and who at the age of
eighteen looks an awful lot like he’s sixteen.There’s Hak Ju Lee, a promising young hitter from Jeonju, South Korea
who along with four or five other of his countrymen cluster around their baby-faced
translator untila Latino coach comes
over to say in English, “Tell your guys thees:get out there and start luking for dobble plays.”

There’s a big, friendly kid named Bob Warner who
clatters by in loud cleats, greets us as if we are coaches (we’re the only fans
watching the workout which, by the way, you can just walk up to off the street,
no charge) and clapping other guys on the butts and backs.There’s an old Anglo coach sitting on an
upturned ball crate behind the mound calling out in Spanglish.There’s a gaggle of very young Dominican
players looking a little lost and very much like the high school baseball team
they should probably be.And here comes
a couple of black players with Anglo Saxon names on their backs reminding us of
Tori Hunter’s recent comments that Afro-Caribbean players are being courted and
cultivated by baseball rather than Afro-Americans because they don’t have to go
through the draft, are not subject to the same rules and regulations, and cost
a lot less.

On the mound is a hard-throwing nineteen-year-old
lefthander named Austin Kirk whom no one can get much of a bat on.After his session he shakes hands
enthusiastically with his catcher and comes off the field stopping to talk
Oklahoman to the Korean translator saying that so and so is taking him to eat
Chinese tonight, and he can’t wait. But then he asks, “Now, they don’t eat dog,
do they?”

“No, no,” says the translator. “They make good
dishes with chicken and beef.You’ll
like it.”

Griffin and I look at each other. It’s not just the
foreign kids here who are far from home, nor are they the only ones who are
seeing the larger world for the first time. We each make some notes, Griffin in
his phone, I in my notebook.

If you're in the San Francisco area, head on over to the The War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue in the
Civic Center to catch the US premier of The Little
Mermaid, by Hamburg Ballet Director and Chief Choreographer John
Neumeier. The ballet features an original commissioned score by renowned composer (and BAP blogger ) Lera Auerbach.

According to the SF Ballet program notes, Neumeier’s contemporary version of The
Little Mermaid "is a haunting tale of two divergent worlds: the
serenity and simplicity of underwater life and the complex, often
flamboyant lives of humans. The mermaid heroine travels through both
worlds, enduring torment because of her committed love for a prince—but
through her own strength in the end—transcends."

to plan for tonight's The Thin Air poetry cable show. Producer Mitch Corber brings us another episode in this landmark series, with footage of David Lehman's recent reading from Yeshiva Boys at the New School, along with footage of fave's John Ashbery,
Kenneth Koch, and others. Set your alarm for 8:30 p.m, and tune your TV dial to Channel 67, Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Associate editor Cindy Sostchen-Hochman tells us it's going to be a great show!

Well it’s a heady day in my head today.I embark tomorrow before dawn to Omaha
Nebraska, to discuss the discus of the galaxy as it spins us out and into one
another’s arms.

Furthermore, The Boston Globe has picked up another of my ponderings
to you, to wit, last weeks Gym and Poets Post.I’m writing the news over here.Weird and wonderful.Thanks Chris Shea, I am extremely
flattered.After all, what’s black
and white and red all over, if not my Bleaders?Bleadership.

I was asked to contribute some posts to a super cool skeptic
blog called Unreasonable Faith and the second of my missives just went up today
and I’m kind of carbonated about it.All in a fizz.The lil’
essay just has a jazz tempo to it or something that’s really pleasing me. If you came from there to here, perhaps you'll be interested in this earlier post on Poetic Atheism, or Bubbles.

What else?Welp, I put up a poem on Dear Fonzie the other day, maybe you like
poems?Maybe you like
Trotsky?This is Trotsky’s
Hand.

Are you following Amy (f)Lawless’s posts here? Click her links! Do the quiz! I'm a hawk. She's a crow I swear I really think someone should
give me and her a television show. The Hawk and Crow Show. We would drink heavily and discuss things and likely show a lot of
cleavage.That’s the kind of
imaginative programming we are going to require for the new millennium.Check out her (F)lawless Blog!

I've been meaning to tell you: the folks over at Hilobrow are pretty endlessly
entertaining. Go explore! Have fun. It's what I call One Stop
Shopping.Particularly, have a
look at James Parker’s Cocky the Fox.

And, plus, also, if you want to unzip this zoot suit of a
culture we’ve all been cahooted with, you should really read my book The
Happiness Myth, which, as is reputed of the club med vacation, is an antidote
to civilization.

If you want to know more about why it is great that there is
no God, there is always the option of reading Doubt: A History,
though let’s face it, it takes a while.If you’re thinking, do I really want to read such a big book?Think of me.I had to write it!It took years!Reading it
is really the least you can do.

Looks like spring has sprung a little.Brace yourselves, Bridgets!

Good work staying alive since last week, most of you.Seriously, I’m slow clapping in my
mind, chucking each of you under the chin, and pinching several of you on your
bottoms – whether you are wearing green or not.

Stay with us to next week.

Love,

Jennifer

ps. I've been going rogue here on BAP lately, posting not only on Wednesdays. So if you want to catch possibly missed dispatches, click on "Jennifer Michael Hecht's The Lion and the Honeycomb," for the all the news unfit to print.

pps Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

ppps I've been asked to be one of the judges for something important. I'm not allowed to talk about it quite yet, but it is pretty cool.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” --Albert Einstein

No book brought me more belly laughs and head shakes and murmurs under-my-breath of "So true, so true" as Nicholson Baker's 2009 gem "The Anthologist," which was published by Simon and Schuster. The book is written from the perspective of Paul Chowder, a recently dumped poetry anthologist who is lonely for his kind, big hearted ex-girlfriend Roz and unable to complete the daunting task of writing an introduction to his forthcoming anthology of rhymed poems entitled "Only Rhyme." Chowder "works" relentlessly at this introduction -- and by that I mean he thinks and works on everything except the introduction. He has a mental block -- this is something many if not all writers and humans can relate to. If you can't relate to it, you're lying to yourself. Instead of our protagonist presenting his best side, he leans on his worst foot. The reader is privy to his most dull thoughts, the worst parts of his existence--every day is an assault of loneliness, accidental hand cuts, and disintegrating brooms. In a favorite passage, our hero is cutting bread:

So I had a slice of bread, and a few calamata olives, and I started singing "Saved by a woman," by Ray LaMontagne, at the top of my lungs, while cutting a second slice, and I got a little jiggy with the bread knife, which is new and sharp with squared-off serrations, and I cut off a small dome of my fingermeat. It was very similar to cutting off the end of the loaf of bread, except that it hurt. I said some bad words and bled on the bread, and then I went upstairs to the bathroom and did my best to repositionhe sliced-off part where it was supposed to go, and although the blood continued I was able to encircle the fingertip--my left hand's index fingertip--with two Band-aids. It was the same finger that had crashed into the doorjamb, if you can believe it. I didn't call Roz because two cuts on the same finger is an embarrassment, and I've gotten quite good at self-Band-Aiding." (Baker, The Anthologist, pgs. 139-40).

So, yes, our hero is struggling. And that's exactly why he's so endearing. Let's face it, people: life is pain. The Buddhists were right. And instead of beating his chest and being stoic [though the argument can be made that not calling the ex is a form of stoicism], all of his failures are laid bare on the page. I related to him very much indeed, but not because I'm clumsy. I related to him because he was human like all of us. When was the last time you farted in front of your boss? When was the last time you burned yourself making pie? When was the last time your friend said you had a "bat in the cave"? Life is full of embarrassments. I applaud Baker for his ten star character development.

But "The Anthologist" is so much more! Chowder is always thinking about poetry, whether fetishizing a hot lovers weekend between Louise Bogan and Theodore Roethke ("Louse Bogan said that Theodore Roethke made her 'bloom like a Persian rosebush" during their long happy sex weekend together." [Baker, pg. 78]) or if he's promising himself that he is Sara Teasdale's number one fan. The most fascinating parts of this book, which I dare you to put down once you've started it, is discussion of poetry. Baker knows his shit and is a man of letters. I wonder -- and mind you I haven't even googled this yet -- if Baker has written any of his own verse. He certainly either researched the hell out of poetry at-large and can explain the iamb and enjambment better than I ever could. Makes you wonder. So my point is, this is not just any novel. It teaches the reader about poetry, poetry in America, it's hilarious, and honest. Chowder is a modern hero. He's not what hollywood would have you believe a hero is (an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances). He's an extraordinary person living in an ordinary world. All throughout the novel, the reader is rooting for Chowder to finish the introduction--we know he can do it! He knows everything about rhyme and if he could just....turn off Dirty Jobs....he could definitely finish that intro! Ah, the lament of the the non-anthologist.

Question: Why do you love poetry?

Answer: Because you can't help it.

Thank you, Nicholson Baker for writing the book of the year, 2009.

Yours, Amy Lawless

P.S., Nicholson Baker's Beard. I knew you knew I'd mention it. Here it is, in all its glory!

Of course, I couldn't let the day go by without a little bit of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem for ya!

Carrickfergus is an ancient town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Because of its proximity to Belfast, it has a long history of involvement with the struggle for independence. The Irish language name of the town, Carraig Fhearghais, means "the Rock of Fergus" in English. (Literary trivia - Jonathan Swift once lived nearby.) This song is a 19th century translation of an old folk song and probably resonated deeply with the many immigrants who left Ireland to come to America in the second half of that century.

Carrickfergus Castle

The poem Tommy Makem recites at the beginning of the clip below is "High and Low" by the Irish poet James H. Cousins (1873-1956). Here is the text:

He stumbled home from Clifden fair
With drunken song, and cheeks aglow.
Yet there was something in his air
That told of kingship long ago.
I sighed -- and inly cried
With grief that one so high should fall so low.

But he snatched a flower and sniffed its scent,
And waved it toward the sunset sky.
Some old sweet rapture through him went
And kindled in his bloodshot eye.
I turned -- and inly burned
With joy that one so low should rise so high.

Have a wonderful St. Patrick's Day! Or, as they say in Carrickfergus, Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh!

March 16, 2010

Isn’t this Linda? he asks.
This is the number I was given, he says.
You can detect his humiliation
emitting a high frequency sound
that, frankly, you’re good at hearing—
like you’re the dog of humiliation.
He repeats the number and repeats her name.
Now you’re an incompetent god
listening to a petition,
and unable to do the smallest thing to relieve
ordinary misery.
And maybe you think you could cooperate for a second
and say, This is Linda,
and then let him figure it out.
Although, face it, the man keeps
repeating the number,
and you say again, Yes,
that is this number,
until he fully realizes
that she’s stiffed him.
And he knows that you know too.
And a needle of pain vibrates
in his breathing.
The phone doesn’t click
as if the man still hopes
you’re Linda playing a trick
and at any moment will say,
in the strange intimacy that phones project,|
you’ll say: Of course it’s Linda—I just can’t resist teasing you.
As a consequence,
you have to be the first to hang up,
but of course he calls againthinking he misdialed earlier,
and he says, Linda?
and you want to tell the man:
You’ve made more than one mistake.
Dear God, stop bothering me.
Oh, but you won’t say that
because you feel like apologizing for Linda,
but that would be idiotic like
apologizing for Eve.
As if you believed in original sin.
Hasn’t unearned
guilt caused enough suffering?
And then the man
on the other end of the line
says again, Linda?
in this sad little bleat,
and you,
you say,
This isn’t Linda,
but what is your name?
And then he hangs up,
a bit terrified of you.
But that’s all right:
he won’t call again,
and he’s not thinking about Linda;
he’s thinking there’s something
wrong with you,
and evidently
something is.

Hey everyone! It's the day before St. Patrick's day! I know all you Irish out there are in the last day of "The Master Cleanse" so you can drink your weight in beer tomorrow and then drain the main vein onto Seventh Avenue traffic.... But not me. I'm home sick in bed with terrible bronchitis AND a sinus infection. My whole face hurts as if it were just intimate with a staircase (bang, bang, bang, bang, bang). After sending out a couple emails eliciting sympathy from various sisters and friends that said: "Hey look I'm sick!", I picked up my prescriptions and returned to Napland, USA.

The second picture--the photograph, dummy, is a photo of me from last year attempting to enter napland. The photo is no Rielle Hunter GQ spread. That's for sure. You can't see any love-children (cuz I ain't got none), and you can't see even one centimeter of toned abs....but I love that photo because clearly I knew my photo was being taken, as I'd carefully pried off my glasses and carefully placed these specs beside myself.

So today is what's called: Shout Out Tuesday. What's the point of Shout Out Tuesday? It's to write about people a few cool people I know and the cool stuff they did or are doing. Sure I'm cool and all and could clearly talk about myself all day [that's no spoiler alert], but that's not the point or the message behind Shout Out Tuesday. No, no NO! Shout Out Tuesday is about the others.

Firstly, I would like to mention my talented sister, Molly Lawless. She's writing an amazing graphic novel about timey baseball players Carl Mays and Ray Chapman. It's amazing to me how detailed and beautiful her story telling is. She does the hard research of getting everything right. Shout out to Molly! [Then all you readers join in and say 'SHOUT OUT TO MOLLY!] There, you did it! very good. I pasted one of Molly's many many cool images, but you can just click on her name up there for more. Follow Molly's blog because she has all sorts of cool illustrations every week! And buy her book when it comes out! I am so proud of Molly and not just because she's my sister, but because she's so awesome. Buy her book when it comes out.

Secondly, I'd like to give shout outs to Ben Mirov. He wrote this awesome chapbook that won the New Michigan Press chapbook contest called I is to Vorticism. I am sure that Ben was referring to Pound's essay Vorticism which discussed the relationship between self to idea, self to other, self to art movement. I am glad Ben is thinking about these ideas while the rest of us are wondering when dinner is. I'm proud of him also, but he's not my kid brother, though that would be rad. He would make a good brother, because I could tease him and tell our parents that he was misbehaving--even when he's not, which is something I'd really like to do.

Here's a poem from Ben Mirov's I Is to Vorticism that I really liked:

CANDLES

I wish I had ideasI really need your help.Pretend I'm your rabbit.Your piano recital.The ghost that makes you writewhatever you want.Pretend I'm whatever you want.I'm going to imagine you're a womanstaring out a kitchen windowhands and facecovered in suds.Here's my sputtering match:We do terrible things in the name of love.Picture me punching through seven mirrors.Picture everyone you knowpunching through seven mirrors.Picture the Power Goddessdescending from the skyand placing a wreath of basil on your head.Now open your eyes.Not those eyes.The ones inside you.

So that just about wraps up Shout Out Tuesday. Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better! Wish me luck.

The snow is gone, the sun is out, and green things are poking up through the dirt. Today I started cleaning up the old weeds and overgrowth that I left at the end of last summer, and I can see tiny green shoots just starting on the lavender that I forgot to cut back in the fall. The ground smells ground-y, and the birds are chirping. If you are looking for metaphor, look no farther than out the front door.

So, in the spirit of new beginnings, I am making some resolutions. Here they are. Hold me to them, please.

Get all the flowerbeds cleared out by the end of this week. I'm on spring break, and the weather is supposed to be nice, so I have no excuses.

Cut back the ivy and put in the waterfall/pond I've been talking about for three years.

Get the ground tilled and ready for a big kitchen garden.

Plant everything in good time.

Keep up with everything all summer.

Take time every day to sit and contemplate the flowers.

I am counting on you to not let me be a horticultural slacker, now. In reward, I'll post lots of pictures, and you can have as many zucchini as you can carry.

I'm so happy, I can hardly sit still. Here's a spring poem. Read it, then go outside and get some fresh air.

Have you ever tried meditation?Of course you have, right, if you’re sufficiently inclined
towards transcendence as to read a poetry blog, you have in your life, sat
quite still and tried not to think.

There is a great Eastern description of meditation, and here
I liberally paraphrase, that says asking the mind to stay focused on one thing
is like asking a monkey to stay perfectly still, if the monkey has been given
coffee and vodka, is being menaced by a bee, is surrounded by good-looking jumping monkeys,
while AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” is being blasted at the monkey
enclosure.

It is downright hilarious how hard it is to get the mind to
settle down.Give it one minute,
right now (at the end of this paragraph). Think only of your breath and count, with each exhale, one
number.Count from one to ten and
back again.As soon as you notice
you are not thinking about your breath and one to ten, go back to one.Look at the clock where you are sitting,
add two minutes to the time, whatever it is, then close your eyes and start
counting breaths and thinking of nothing else.If you think it’s been about two minutes open your eyes and
check – go back in if it’s not time yet. This way we’ll get you to stay in for
at least a minute.Go.Okay, we’re back.Hard wasn’t it?

It is equally hard to remember, for a full minute, that you
are playing Bejeweled Blitz.Matching the shapes is easy.There’s always a match on the board to be made and usually two or
more.They are easy to see.The only difficulty is remembering to
keep doing it, as fast as you can.A few matches in, you fall into a rhythm and the rhythm generally runs
down.Every once in a while an
accidental cascade puts a very fast rhythm in your head and you are able to
match shapes fast for a good few seconds before again a part of your mind simply
gets up to go check the fridge.

If you could remember you are playing, you’d win.If you could keep thinking of only the
game.

At the end of each game, whatever your game may be, when
your game ends, ask yourself immediately: What am I thinking about?

It will be something other than the game.

Ask yourself to put your whole attention on the game.If your lucky you’ll do it for the
first three shape matches, then off most of your brain will go.There’s you landing wet at the end of a
minute, laughing, having been treated by your brain to a short conference on
what to bring to the PTA pot luck or the derivations of Pi.

We have developed in such a way that our brain’s default
setting is multitasking.If you
would like to do something well, all you have to do is learn to focus on that one thing.Stop thinking of other things while you
are doing it.I showed a few lines
of this post to my husband John Chaneski while I was just hashing this up and
he said, “It’s like acting.”And I was like, wow yeah, it’s true.Good actors are just people who can remember, for a
sustained period, that they are supposed to be being someone else.

Well, go concentrate on something.Let me know how
it goes.

How do I love thee?I love the to the breadth and depth and height my soul can reach when
feeling out of sorts with the ends of being and ideal grace and posting out of
turn, on a Tuesday.

Douglas A. Martin and Lee Upton read at KGB last night. The audience begged for an encore, and they got it. Here are some highlights:

Douglas A. Martin is the author most recently of Once You Go Back, a novel (Seven Stories Press). His other books include Your Body Figured (Nightboat Books, 2008); Branwell, a novel of the Bronte brother; They Change the Subject, stories; and In the Time of Assignments, poems. Outline of My Lover, his first novel, was named an International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and adapted by the Forsythe Company for their multimedia dance- theater piece, "Kammer/Kammer." He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University and also teaches in the Low Residency MFA Writing Program at Goddard College.

Lee Upton is the author of eleven books, including the novella The Guide to the Flying Island (Miami University Press). She has written five books of poetry, most recently Undid in the Land of Undone, and four books of literary criticism. Her poetry and short stories appear widely. She is the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College.

Join us on Monday, March 22 for Brett Eugene Ralph and Kiki Petrosino.

March 15, 2010

When
I was a boy growing up in an Irish immigrant household in the Bronx, March 17th
was second only to December 25th in its potent mix of religion, magic, and
celebration.We'd wait for the air-mail
letter from our relatives in Galway to arrive and we'd carefully remove from it
the little sprig of shamrock plucked from the soil of Holy Ireland and shaken
free in the Bronx. We'd go to mass in the morning, with everyone singing the
beautiful hymn, "Hail Glorious St. Patrick" [click on the title to hear the late Frank Patterson's version]. And, as a member of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians All-Accordion Band, along with my father and brother Jimmy (now Jesse), we would
march up 5th Avenue in the St. Patrick's Day Parade, something I did 11 years
in a row. Post-parade, the underage drinking and wilding became part of one's
Irish adolescence in New York. [photo above: AOH All-Accordion band,
ca. 1955; Terence Winch, front row, far right; Jesse Winch, 3rd from right]

The
parade began in this country as an assertion of Irish identity and the growing
political power of Ireland's immigrants.In contrast, until
recent decades, March 17th in Ireland itself was much more a religious holiday.

[below: New
York City's parade, 1871. A float featuring a bust of Daniel O'Connell passes
through Union Square. The first recorded St. Patrick's Day parade was held in
Boston, in 1737. New York was the second
city to embrace the annual march, beginning in 1762.]

I
wrote the poem below on the street, using a mailbox for a desk, on the way to a
St. Paddy's Day gig with my band, Celtic Thunder, in the late 1990s.

P R A Y E RT OS
T.P A T R I C K

St. Patrick, snake-hating
Brit, forgive

us our sins, our wins, our
losses,

forgive us our employees
and bosses,

forgive us those stupid
four-leaf clovers

that idiots confuse with
the Holy Trinity-signifying

shamrock, especially
around this time of year.

Forgive us green beer,
Hostess cupcakes with green

icing, forgive us the
moronic greening

of hair, food, water.Forgive us the total

lack of meaning that now
attaches to your name.

It is all truly unseemly
and insane.

Grant us a moratorium on
any more news of

the triumphs ofMichael Flatley or Frank McCourt.

God bless Paddy’s pig and
Paddy Moloney’s wig,

Mickey and Andy Rooney,
Rosemary and George Clooney.

Requiescat in pace,
Versace et Liberace.

In nomine Dei, we’ve had
enough of Leahy.

Dear saint of our isle,
we’d like to send ya

an urgent plea to abolish
Enya.

Let the bar owners pay

the poor musicians

a small fortune.

They’re earning it.

Banish misfortune for the
Irish

over here and the Irish
over there.

Banish “Danny Boy” and
“The Unicorn”

while you’re at it.

Let there be an
Irish-American fin de siècle

starring Mark McGwire and
Margaret Heckler.

Grant another eighty-seven
years to my Auntie Nora

and let history smile upon
the Irish Diaspora.

Let the music be on the
mark.

Lead the fiddle players
from the dark

of orthodoxy. Oremus for
my brother Seamus.

Let a thousand poems and
songs

end the battles and undo
the wrongs.

[This poem
first appeared in Irish Music magazine (March 2000) and later in my book, Boy
Drinkers.]

Equally irreverent is a well-known song, written by Henry
Bennett in the 1820s:

But St. Patrick (385─461 AD), all irreverence aside,
really deserves to live on in our collective memory.In his brilliant 1995 best-seller, How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill writes with eloquent insight and
feeling about Patrick, really giving the man a human shape.Patrick "...worries constantly for his
people, not just for their spiritual but for their physical welfare. The horror
of slavery was never lost on him [Patrick had been a slave himself for six years]: 'But
it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most—and who keep their spirits
up despite the menacing and terrorizing they must endure. The Lord gives grace
to his many handmaids; and though they are forbidden to do so, they follow him
with backbone.'"A primal
feminist!Cahill goes on: "...the
greatness of Patrick is beyond dispute: the first human being in the history of
the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery. Nor will any voice as
strong as his be heard again till the seventeenth century."He's earned his parade.

Statue of St. Patrick at Leaba Padriag (St.
Patrick's Bed) in Connemara (Galway).

If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?

Shelly wrote hundreds of thousands of years ago that the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Well, we sure know that poets are unacknowledged, that's for sure. How many blank stares have you poets fielded when you've told some hot guy who's hitting on you that you write words followed by line breaks (not to be precious about defining what a poem is..... ) But what's a legislator? A legislator is someone who makes laws and supposedly ensure sthat the laws are carried out.

If a poet is busy "legislating" -- e.g., talking about current events, writing poems about the soul, nature walking, creating fake laws about "how things are and should be done," bullshitting about the war, is anyone, ANYONE--besides friends--paying attention anyway? I don't know. The poet has an important job here in human society. I think a lot of members of the media are [bad] poets. OH ho ho ho, I'm not saying they ARE poets. Right? I'm saying they're like [bad] poets. They gather around the tree like Charlie Brown and friends wave their hands and make whatever topic they're discussing beautiful or at minimum MEANINGFUL. [See this amazing video below. For the reference to the joke I'm referring to, please go to 2:44 seconds and onward. thanks Robert Smigel!http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/6125/Peanuts-Christmas-SNL-Real-Audio/

I may have inserted that video twice. I'm not sure. The media used to be in the trenches, respecting authority of the agencies, companies, baseball teams they were covering. Now a reporter has hung up his press hat for a CNN uniform or a lonely laptop and a real big, broad [holding my hands out on either side of my body as if i'm measureing a fish] internet bandwidth connection. Who knows if any of this makes sense. I don't know anymore. ... I don't know about ANYTHING anymore! [gentle sob] Corey Haim is dead, hundreds of Americans are losing their healthcare everyday, and iFart is no longer the top iPhone App. I feel the America I learned to love in has gone away, is turning into dust in my hands and I just want to show you so much....[gentle sob, rocking body back and forth back and forth, cough, look at tissue, there is blood in it]

Yeah Amy, stop acting like such a itty-baby Keats all the sudden. You're 33 years old. Don't be precious about a country that you pay as much attention to as you do to your own stool samples half the time [the other time i pay close attention to my stool samples by the way...]. Oh but I want to change! I can change! I swear I'll be better for you, Girl! I will be there every day, sweating my self silly until you see how much you mean to me!

See how serious I am? This isn't me -- this is a graphic internet interpretation of what I am like now, I consider the world we live in to be like a baby I've carried to the 3rd trimester.

So, see how hard it is to be a poet? You have to think and worry about everything all the time! And if you stop for a few months and make sure to dot all your T's and cross all your I's, it becomes harder to write these beauty babies down. I'm being purposefully precious. But I encourage all of us to bullshit about the wars our country is in. I encourage all of us to engage in heady discussions about the healthcare debate. If you're an unappreciated adjunct professor somewhere, go ahead and work our current events into the discussion of the class.

Some asshole once said "Those who can't, teach." And that's just it. He -- he had to be a man -- was a total asshole. He was probably also a shitty teacher. Most students I've encountered have open enough minds that they want to at minimum know more about their world. And poets are perfect people to be plying these minds!

PS, sorry that yesterday I told you to set the clocks the wrong way. I never said I was 100% accurate. It turns out someone was 2 hours early for work in Barcelona yesterday because of me and I apologize half-heartedly for that.

Faithful readers know that a retrospective of thirty Kurosawa movies was recently shown at the Film Forum in New York City's Houston Street, and we had the good fortune to get a running commentary, as meticulous as it was enthusiastic,from Kurosawa maven Lewis Saul.

Now Turner Classic Movies is about to show Kurosawa movies on three consecutive Tuesdays. On Tuesday March 16,
2010, at 8:00 PM TCM is showing The Bad
Sleep Well (1960) with its echoes of Hamlet.

At 10:45 PM, it's High And Low (1963), also with Toshiro Mifune -- based on an Ed McBain police procedural. Red Beard (1965) goes on at 1:15 AM., and I Live in Fear (1955) at 4:30 AM.

TCM is going to be all Kurosawa all the time on Tuesday March 23 -- with The Seven Samurai, Stray Dog, Rashomon and Yojimbo. Three more of his late pictures, including Ran, will play on March 30. And more to come in April.

Read or re-read Lew's posts after or before seeing any of these great movies, Click here, for example. or here (on Seven Samurai) or here(on High and Low).

March 14, 2010

This is a passage from Part II, "Patterns of Bad Faith," from Chapter Two, "Bad Faith," in Jean-Paul Sartre's Being And Nothingness (Editions Gallimard, 1943; English translation, The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1956).

"Take the example of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this conduct as an attempt to achieve what we call "the first approach"; that is, she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents. She restricts this behavior to what he is in the present; she does not wish to read in the phrases which he addresses to her anything other than their explicit meaning. If he says to her, "I find you so attractive!" she disarms this phrase of its sexual background; she attaches to the conversation and to the behavior of the speaker, the immediate meanings, which she imagines as objective qualities. The man who is speaking to her appears to her sincere and respectful as the table is round or square, as the wall coloring is blue or gray. The qualities thus attached to the person she is listening to are in this way fixed in a permanence like that of things, which is no other than the projection of the strict present of the qualities into the temporal flux. This is because she does not quite know what she wants. She is profoundly aware of the desire which she inspires, but the desire cruel and naked would humiliate and horrify her. Yet she would find no charm in a respect which would be only respect. In order to satisfy her, there must be a feeling which is addressed wholly to her personality --i.e., to her full freedom--and which would be a recognition of her freedom. But at the same time this feeling must be wholly desire; that is, it must address itself to her body as object. This time then she refuses to apprehend the desire for what it is; she does not even give it a name; she recognizes it only to the extent that it transcends itself toward admiration, esteem, respect and that it is wholly absorbed in the more refined forms which it produces, to the extent of no longer figuring anymore as a sort of warmth and density. But then suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the situation by calling for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is to consent in herself to flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect--a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion--neither consenting nor resisting--a thing.

We shall say that this woman is in bad faith. But we see immediately that she uses various procedures in order to maintain herself in this bad faith. She has disarmed the actions of her companion by reducing them to being only what they are; that is, to existing in the mode of the in-itself. But she permits herself to enjoy his desire, to the extent that she will apprehend it as not being what it is, will recognize its transcendence. Finally while sensing profoundly the presence of her own body--to the point of being aroused, perhaps--she realizes herself as not being her own body, and she contemplates it as though from above as a passive object to which events can happen but which can neither provoke them nor avoid them because all its possibilities are outside of it."

To counterpoint this passage, you might want to take a look at the famous nude photo of de Beauvoir, taken by Art Shay, Algren's best friend, when de Beauvoir was visiting Algren in Chicago (above). Algren didn't have a bathtub in his apartment (he used the Y, I think), so he asked his friend Shay to find her a place with a tub. It seems de Beauvoir never closed the door when she went to the bathroom for any reason, so when she stepped out of the tub and stood in front of the sink, Shay snapped a few quick shots with his ever-present Leica. According to Shay, de Beauvoir said, "You naughty boy!" but made no attempt to close the door, and didn't tell him not to photograph her. New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik said of the photo, "It was quite a rear." I read somewhere that de Beauvoir was buried still wearing Algren's ring, but maybe that's just a story.

This week we welcome Amy Lawless as our guest blogger. Amy is originally from Boston and lives in
Brooklyn. Her first book of poems, Noctis
Licentia, was published by Black Maze Books in 2008. Her
poems have recently appeared in Sub-Lit, Scapegoat Review, The
Paramanu Pentaquark,Forklift, Ohio, Portable Boog Reader 3, Agriculture Reader,
Radioactive Moat, Pax Americana, Sink Review, and Barrow Street.
Lawless holds a degree in journalism from Boston University and an MFA
in poetry from The New School. She teaches at John Jay College, and
lives in Brooklyn. For more about Amy, check out her blog, (F)LAWLESS.

Welcome, Amy.

In other news . . .

There's still time to be featured in Tattoosday's National Poetry Month Poets' Tattoos feature. Find out more here.

According to the encyclopedia of the people, the phrase "as the crow flies" means the "shortest route between two points." This is because crows are the smartest birds and they cut a lot of corners. They don't stop off for a Roast Beef sandwich on the way, and they may forget a few things. I often lie awake at night and think "how will I get there?" There is, of course, the place we all want to arrive at, the place of happiness--whether we have the hubris to believe we can be famous, or simply define happiness as Aristotle did in the Nichmachean Ethics, which for the life of me I couldn't remember what it is. But before we can get there which is finding happiness, we have to start someplace, somewhere. It's Sunday morning, and I am in the parental womb for the weekend as it rains and the clocks rewind (YES IT'S DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME! CHANGE YOUR CLOCKS YOU LAZY POETS!), in Roslindale, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the home of Jim and Carol Lawless, those crazy cats who brought me into the world and in whose house I always return to the emotional age of eleven. "Mama! I have a headache!" -Me, last night. "Amy, you left your sock on the floor" -Jim Lawless, five minutes ago.

So yes, dear children, neighbors, cohorts, forefathers, respected elders, friends, frenemies, publishers, BFFs, and Fs, lovers, ex-lovers, family members, and future family members, here is my letter to you about American Poetry. It's an odd mix of forgetting (this is your second reminder to change your clocks), bullshit, humor, and sympathy. Because that's me and we wouldn't have me any other way. (Ha ha ha).

As I hear the dulcet tones of my mother making my oatmeal raisin breakfast in the kitchen (she likes to make sure I have enough fiber when I'm home), I'd like to say that this week is about redemption. It's about getting there. We were joyously reminded not to kill ourselves on this very blog a couple months ago. Let's fly by the seats of our pants for just a week! PLEASE! I'm not saying ignore your crippling student debt, or to not regret some random day you murdered someone three years ago. But have fun. And I am talking not about this, which certainly helps, but there's just so much to live for! When I was a kid I wanted my parents to bring me to Water Country. But now that I'm 33, I am glad they never brought me to Water Country. Think of all the e. coli bacteria that runs rampant from baby diapers and kids picking their noses, then picking their butts, and then picking their noses again, and then jumping into the cool pool, which is slowly turning yellow, and then back to blue. So yes, what I'm trying to say is that caution IS necessary but we're going to have fun here this week and do it my way. P.S., I heart poetry, just in case I never mentioned that....

Here are a few recommendations to get you through this gloomy Sunday:

1. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. Buy it today because we're going to be discussing it in great detail later in the week in a discussion about what it means to be a poet.

2. Please take this quiz to find out what your Spirit Animal is. I am, obviously, a crow. It's great fun for small dinner parties, large wild parties, and privatetête
à têtes.What does your spirit animal mean? It means absolutely nothing, just like horoscopes, but like horoscopes, they give us a sense of meaning about the universe, like reading Nietzsche only with less hair and brain heat.

Ok I will see you tomorrow! Please leave as many comments as you see fit.

Love,

Amy Lawless, your guest blogger for the week.

PS: There are tons of hyper links in this post and your experience reading this will vastly improve if you actually click on them, you lazybones!

The women in therehave been praying for yearsfor what Ijust threw away.

What would he have been?Or she?Crazy like him.Smart like me.

-- Penelope Jane Reid

In 1968, Dick Lourie proposed to the other Hanging
Loose editors (Emmett Jarrett, Ron Schreiber, me) that we start a regular
section in the magazine devoted to writing by high school students.

I thought it was a terrible idea.I
don’t want to read a lot of third-rate imitations of rock lyrics and adolescent
moaning about lost love, I said.Let
them publish in their school magazines.

Luckily, I lost the argument and, right from the beginning, we began to receive
amazing work from young poets all over the country (along with the expected romantic
laments.)I don’t know how they found us
in those pre-Internet days when the few hundred copies we printed rarely
traveled west of the Hudson, but find us they did and the poems and stories have
kept coming now for forty-two years.At
a rough guess, I’d say we’ve published work by over 600 high school writers.

In the late eighties, we decided to collect a lot of the pieces in an
anthology.The news didn’t thrill
everybody. A major funder sniffed: “I can’t imagine why you think we’d have any
interest in supporting work by high school students.”Hmmm: We went ahead without anybody’s support
and, happily, that first collection got rave reviews.Two others have followed and a fourth, When We Were Countries, (with Mark
Pawlak as lead editor), will be published this spring.

Penelope Jane Reid’s “Smart Like Me” appeared in HL #41, in 1981, one of three we ran.Looking back at it now, it still seems to me
a marvel of concision, all the more powerful for its tight lines and lack of
embellishment.We never saw any other
poems from her.She was a student at
J.M. Atherton High School in Louisville, Kentucky when #41 came out.The last we heard, for the anthology’s
contributor notes in 1988, she’d gotten a degree in journalism from Indiana
University.

The high school section has produced a few poetry lifers –
Joanna Fuhrman and Rebecca Wolff come to mind – but most of the young writers
wander off to other pursuits.Penelope
Reid would be in her late forties now.I
hope she’s had a sparkling journalistic career and maybe, just maybe, the
occasional itch to scribble down a terrific poem.

-- Robert Hershon

Editor's note:

Poems by high school students appearing in Hanging Loose have been selected for The Best American Poetry on several occasions. Jorie Graham chose a poem by Jendi Reiter for BAP 1990; Adrienne Rich chose two poems by Natasha Le Bel and one by Deborah Stein for the 1996 volume; Marc Jaffee's "King of Repetition" was picked by Lyn Hejinian for the 2004 edition. I'm trusting my memory here, and there's a chance I'm leaving out somebody. But you get the idea: Hershon and his coeditors have a great eye for young talent. -- DL

March 13, 2010

The best thing about a poetry festival or conference is the opportunity
to connect with fellow poets that are special in your life. Split This
Rock Poetry Festival was fun because I got to hangout with my friend Jan
Beatty.The author of RED SUGAR, she gave a wonderful reading last
night,with fellow poets Jeffrey McDaniel, Natalie Illum,and Quincy
Troupe.McDaniel is just crazy good. He has four books of poetry out.I
plan to buy -THE ENDARKENMENT next week. I'm not down to sock money yet.

Yesterday morning at THE SPLIT I was on a panel with John Rosenwald,Lee
Sharkey and Jody Bolz. This was a lit-date between the editors of Beloit
Poetry Journal and Poet Lore. The session was well attended and
consisted of an excellent exchange between poets.Our topic was "What
Makes Effective Political Poetry? Editors' Perspectives." I raised three
points:

1.What are the politics of the editors?
2.What do we mean by the word effective?
3.What do we want a poem to do?

Lee Sharkey handed out a list of quotes by writers who had addressed the
issue of political poetry. The one I liked the best was by John Berger:

Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry...to bring
together what life has separated or violence has torn apart...Poetry can
repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does
this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been
scattered.("The Hour of Poetry")

So, I said goodbye to Jan Beatty on the bus earlier today. She wanted to
go hear the DC Youth Slam Team Finals.

I headed home with a poem in my head.I was a happy poet. It had been a
good week. Now after Saturday, must come a Sunday kind of love.

"Don't you hear this hammer ring?
I'm gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.